Daily Archives: January, 10, 2013

The gun control debate is often highly-emotional, with both sides throwing out statistics in an effort to sway Americans to either side of the aisle. Since the Sandy Hook shooting last month, CNN’s Piers Morgan has emerged as a vocal proponent for increased gun control laws. This week, after Morgan’s very public, on-air spat with radio host Alex Jones, Ben Swann, a local Fox anchor for WXIX-TV in Cincinnati, offered up a fascinating fact-check of some of the stats that the British CNN host has been using. Morgan will surely find the results unpalatable.

Here’s a graphic provided by the Daily Mailfrom July of 2009 showing the stats cited by Swann:

It’s true that the United States has a higher intentional homicide rate: 4.2 per 100,000 in 2010, according to the UN crime statistics,a fact Charles Krauthammer argues gun rights advocates should be honest about. He argues that Obama’s gun control efforts will not have any effect, and that’s the real tragedy, here.

If we had an honest debate, the gun owners would admit that yes, of course, guns contribute to homicide – the rate in Britain where they don’t have any is 10 times as much as here, (actually it’s about 3 times as much) Japan had 11 homicides, last year – that’s a weekend in Chicago. BUT – where we’re different is we have a 200 year history and culture of gun ownership and we have a 2nd Amendment. And we have a system that believes the rights in the 2nd Amendment predate the Republic. And the point of having a government, as in the declaration, is to secure the rights. In Britain, you have no such rights, the government will control gun ownership – so unless you’re willing to confiscate, which would be unconstitutional and would cause an insurrection in this country….these things are not going to have an effect, except at the margins – and that’s the tragedy.

Wyoming lawmakers have proposed a new bill that, if passed, would nullify any federal restrictions on guns, threatening to jail federal agents attempting to confiscate guns, ammunition magazines or ammunition.

The bill – HB0104 – states that “any federal law which attempts to ban a semi-automatic firearm or to limit the size of a magazine of a firearm or other limitation on firearms in this state shall be unenforceable in Wyoming.”

The hot new video at MRCTV.org is 1995 footage of Attorney General Eric Holder, when he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In his remarks before the Woman’s National Democratic Club, broadcast by CSPAN 2, Holder said people should be ashamed to own guns, just the way that cigarette smokes now “cower outside of buildings” to smoke.

“What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that’s not cool, that it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we’ve changed our attitudes about cigarettes. You know, when I was growing up, people smoked all the time. Both my parents did. But over time, we changed the way that people thought about smoking, so now we have people who cower outside of buildings and kind of smoke in private and don’t want to admit it.” Laughter followed.

UPDATE:

Via Geo – this guy’s even better….

I don’t know who this guy is, but he should be making himself available to debate Piers Morgan as soon as it can be arranged. Of course, Piers prefers clownish carnival barkers like Alex Jones and Jesse Ventura.

Like this:

The Liberty Loyalists in Missouri are holding a Consent of the Governed Rally in Jeff City, January 16:

It’s time for patriots and lawmakers, alike, to get out of their comfort zone!

Nearly everything we hold near and dear — indeed, core American values — are facing what might be the greatest threat in our nation’s history.

I’m sure I don’t need to list the threats, but I do want to point out that one line of defense after another seems to be failing us. The U.S. Supreme Court failed to protect our right to make our own health care decisions. Even with a Republican majority in the U.S. House, Congress keeps passing bills that will prove devastating for generations to come.

And the president, well, need I say anything…

Now these very people who have failed to protect us want to literally disarm us!

Our state legislature is the next line of defense, but will they live up to their oath of office? Will they have the knowledge and courage to stand up to unconstitutional attacks on our liberty by the D.C. Beltway crowd?

I have been very active as a citizen lobbyist at the state Capitol for over a dozen years and I can tell you the answer is No!Unless we hold their feet to the fire, that is.

That’s what the annual Consent of the Governed Rally is all about. Our message to legislators is, “We’re from the People, and we’re here to help!”

More than that, this year we will be there to demand that they stand in the gap to protect Missouri from the people who are systematically dismantling America.

Come and learn about the Missouri Liberty Initiative.

Find out how we CAN fight unconstitutional attacks on our right to keep and bear arms.

Find out how a return to Founding Principles is the best economic development tool we have.

Like this:

The Hill reported that the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee will oppose Jack Lew’s nomination to be Treasury secretary.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has prepared a statement saying “Jack Lew must never be Secretary of Treasury.”He is not saying yet whether he will filibuster the nomination, however, which sources say President Obama will announce Thursday. Sessions expects that the Lew nomination will fail in the Senate, an aide said.

Sessions is still mortified by Lew’s brazen misrepresentation of Obama’s 2012 budget which he farcically claimed did not add to the debt.

“His testimony before the Senate Budget Committee less than two years ago was so outrageous and false that it alone disqualifies,” according to the Sessions’ statement, which was obtained by The Hill in advance.

The video below, from Feb 2011, shows Lew incorrectly characterizing the deficits under the president’s 2012 budget, much to Senator Sessions’ astonishment.

The comment in question stemmed from Lew’s appearance on CNN the previous Sunday, when he said that “our budget will get us, over the next several years, to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we’re not adding to the debt anymore; we’re spending money that we have each year, and then we can work on bringing down our national debt.”

Sessions noted that the budget that Obama submitted would have added $13 trillion to the debt, never had a deficit less than $600 billion, and spent more than it took in every single year.

After Sessions assaulted him with all the facts and figures, Lew meekly responded, “I just think that if we’re going to have the kind of conversation we need to resolve this, we have to have it in a way that we respect each other, and I respect your position, Senator.” To which Sessions exasperatedly replied, “I can’t respect a position that suggests that this budget reduces the debt! If you take that position, we’re talking beyond each other!”

After Lew offered some other inanity, Sessions cut him off: “Well forgive me, Mr. Chairman, but …I don’t think it’s a matter of opinion, it’s flatly in error and it cannot continue, and I hope that the president and you never repeats that this budget balances at any point in the ten years.”